He had been coming and going in this way for about three weeks when one evening, on his return from town, not finding his wife below stairs, he ran up to her. She lay on the bed, asleep, in the attitude of trustful composure which had moved him on their first wedded morning. Near the bed he saw a crumpled paper on the floor. Laura Lou’s sleep was so sound that he picked up the paper and smoothed it out under the lamp without waking her. It was a letter, bearing the address of a drummer’s hotel at Seattle, and it began: “Well, in a few more days now, little sweet, I’ll be back home again, and I guess we’ll have some good times round about Christmas, if Bunty Hayes is the man I take him for. Say, honey, how long do they let you off that school for the holidays … ?”
Vance read no further. He stood motionless, looking at his wife. She had not told Bunty Hayes; Mrs. Tracy had not told him. Vance saw that both women had been afraid, and pity and wrath struggled in him, the wrath mostly for Mrs. Tracy, the pity—well, yes, the pity for Bunty Hayes. The women hadn’t treated him squarely. … Vance let the letter fall where he had found it. …
The next day—his last at the office before Christmas—he handed in his article on Eric Rauch’s Voodoo. He wasn’t satisfied with it; he knew it wasn’t good. And he hated it because it was part of what he was expected to do for The Hour in return for the salary he had to have.
Tarrant, evidently, didn’t care for the article either; though he was prepared to do so later, Vance suspected, if good reasons were forthcoming. Vance had already learned that his chief’s opinions were always twenty-four hours late. At first he had thought it was because they matured as slowly as his own; but he had begun to suspect a different reason. Somebody, not always immediately available, did Tarrant’s thinking for him—Vance wondered if it were his wife. He had not had much time to think of Mrs. Tarrant since his encounter with her on the afternoon when she had offered to read Dante with him. He had heard no more of her since; she never came to the office, and he had no time to go and see her, even had the idea occurred to him—which it never did. At most, he thought enviously now and then of the rows and rows of books in the room where she had received him. …
“Of course,” Tarrant said, “there are things about it … certainly. … Only, perhaps … well, I see you’re a traditionalist at heart. …” He wavered. “Not a bad thing, perhaps … the tabula rasa’s getting to be an old story, eh? Well, I don’t deny …”
“Somebody asking for Mr. Weston,” a voice came through the door of the editorial retreat. Tarrant looked relieved at not being obliged to commit himself farther, and Vance, surprised at the summons, went back to the outer office.
Bunty Hayes stood there. He was crimson and shiny in the face, as if from cold or drink, and looked larger than life in the cramped space. He glared at Vance furiously. “That you, is it? Doing the highbrow act, eh? Call yourself a magazine editor, do you? Well, I’ll tell you what I call you.” He did so, in a rush of oaths and imprecations.
Vance received them in silence, and his silence had the effect of increasing the other’s exasperation. “Well, haven’t you got anything to say, take it all lying down, will you? Well, I’ll give you something that’ll keep you from getting up again. …” His fist, red and shiny as his face, flew out and caught Vance under the ear. … The blow was violent but unsteady—Vance noticed that at once. The fellow was half drunk—drunk enough to be pitiable, though not (Vance also perceived) to be undangerous. But to Vance he would have been pitiable even if he had been sober.
“You damn dirty thief, you … Steal women, do you?” Vance saw him squaring himself for another blow, and his own fighting instinct flamed up. By this time Bunty’s denunciations had summoned the slender staff of The Hour to the outer office. The typewriter girl wailed, “It’s a holdup,” but the men laughed and reassured her. … “Let ’em alone—it’s their funeral,” Vance heard, as Bunty’s fist leapt out at him again. His own was raised to parry it. He was the lighter and swifter, and he was sober—he had all the advantages. His arm dropped, and he drew back against the wall. “Better go home now—I’ll see you wherever you want,” he said, his hands in his pockets, the welt of his first blow spreading up his cheek like fire.
“Ho, a coward too, are you? Standing there to take your licking as if you were sitting for your portrait? I’ll make a portrait of you, by God. … See me do it, boys. …”
Tarrant’s door opened and he came out. He was very pale, and his thin lips were drawn together in a narrow line of disdain.
“Weston—what’s all this? I’ll thank you to do your fighting elsewhere. …”
Bunty Hayes broke into a
